Sherrod Brown Declines Opportunity to Apologize to Obama

Tuesday, Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) said President Barack Obama was “disrespectful” toward Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) when he called her by her first name while criticizing her for opposing his fast track trade legislation.

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Wednesday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” White House press Secretary Josh Earnest suggested that Brown apologize by saying, “I’m confident that after he’s had a chance to look at the comments he made yesterday that he’ll find a way to apologize.”

Wednesday afternoon on MSNBC’s “Andrea Mitchell Reports,” when asked if he wanted to apologize, Brown declined to do so saying, “Yeah, I don’t want this to be personal either way. You know, this to me is about how we put people to work, and how our workers are retrained, and how we enforce trade rules and take care of those workers that inevitably lose their jobs from wrong-headed trade agreements.”

He continued, “I’ve been talking to the White House for the last couple of days. I always talk to the White House about all kinds of issues. This is a really important issue for our country. I assume this will be back on the floor. We have no business sending a bill to the White House for more trade agreements without taking care of workers who lose jobs and without enforcing trade rules that really will help to keep us competitive and establish a level playing field for our companies and our workers.”